


A Change of Scenery

by fringesandcringes



Series: 12 days of ficmas 2017 [5]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-16 06:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13048710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fringesandcringes/pseuds/fringesandcringes
Summary: Phil hesitates at the prospect of meeting with a prestigious film producer to discuss a possible project, but Dan pushes him to consider. The series of developments that come after, however, was not something either of them anticipated.(Alternatively: five years into the future, amidst a settled life, they try something new.)





	1. Connections

**Author's Note:**

> happy day five. i shyly present to you my very first multi-chaptered fic! it's something that's been in my head for a really long time. a few things, in case you weren't familiar (because i defs wasn't before i started researching):
> 
> 1\. A24 is a film (and TV) production company that specializes in prestigious, independent movies, usually ones at the centre of oscar conversations  
> 2\. Noah Sacco is one of their main executive producers, and is big on searching for new talent and reaching out to them
> 
> i hope you'll enjoy :D

It started, of course, out of Dan’s infuriating persistence. 

“Just _go_ to that meeting. It will literally cost you nothing.” Dan repeats with a mouth full of toothpaste. He continues to address Phil’s reflection in the mirror, watching his partner’s crouched body as he pulls on fuzzy socks. “If you don’t, you’ll never hear the end of it from Marianne.” He spits and turns on the faucet.

“We both know there’s plenty to lose. Picture this,” Phil starts, unravelling their bedding. He swings a leg over to the soft surface, crossing his legs. He watches his husband emerge from their ensuite in his usual black shorts and nothing else. “I go to the meeting. They suggest something ridiculous, like dinner at Le Gavroche, and they’d tell me all about how excited they are to work with me, use my branding as an existing platform to give me the creative control so many young filmmakers could only dream about--”

“Yourself included,” Dan interrupts.

“Yes, young Kill Bill-obsessed Philly included. They get excited, I get excited, and once they send me off to work on this, the emotional baggage of repressing my original and bold ideas due to intense insecurity and fear of judgement will come haunt me and ruin my one chance. I die, you die, and poor little Pancake will have to live with your parents for the rest of your life. Isn’t that right, pumpkin?” He scratches the ear of the dog quietly resting at the foot of their bed. Her head perks up at the attention. 

Dan rolls his eyes. “Since when when did you get so _cynical_?

“Probably since I married you.” 

He softly laughs at that, eyes naturally wandering to the prim marriage certificate hanging on the wall across from them at his own insistence. “It was your choice, mate.” He watches Phil scroll down his phone, taking one last look before switching it off. 

Dan isn’t gonna let this go. 

“Alternate outcome,” he gently takes Phil’s phone from his hands. He watches his lips start to pout in frustration.”You take this creative freedom you’ve been secretly wanting for so long, and you end up with a groundbreaking masterpiece, paving the way to us finally attending the oscars. You win, I cry, Kath cries, and you get to take me to Cannes next year.” He suddenly drops the banter and takes a deep breath. “Seriously, Phil, please just go? For me?” 

Phil slowly shakes his head. “Does it really matter to you that much?”

Dan gives him his classic deadpan look. 

“Alright, alright, fine! Whatever. I’ll go to a meeting with whoever Marianne has a contact with.” His stomach churns at the decision, but with regret or thrill, he’s not quite sure. 

Dan, however, lights up. “Yeah? You’re really gonna go?”

“ _Yes,_ Dan, I’m really gonna go. But I’m gonna order the most elaborate cocktail they have.” He slumps onto the pillows and switches off the lamp. He feels arms wrap around him, and hears a soft voice speak. 

“Thank you.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

“I love you.” 

“That’s more of a legal obligation.”

“Fuck off.” 

***

As Dan elbows his way through the 6pm rush at Piccadilly station two weeks later, he feels his back pocket vibrate. He fishes it out once he emerges from the steps and into the fresh air. His lips quirk upwards at Phil’s dumbfounded face at his call log. He immediately dials back.

“Hey!” He hears Phil on the other side. 

“Hey, how was it?”

A beat of pointed silence. “Dan.” 

“What?”

“Did you and Marianne just _happen_ to forget to tell me I was meeting Noah Sacco?”

Dan represses a chuckle. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do. I’d like to take a moment for you to truly appreciate the ambush I felt when I realized I was talking to the executive of freaking A24.” 

Dan couldn’t judge if he was truly angry or not, but felt twinges of guilt nevertheless. “We agreed not to say anything because it would only freak you out.” He replies as he turns a corner, wating to cross. “Look, I’ll be home in, like, ten minutes. Tell me all about it at dinner?”

“I’m still mad at you.”

“Love you! Bye.” 

Phil replies with a bunch of incoherent noises that most likely were intended to be animal sounds, followed by the end of the call. 

Dan laughs heartily, spirits only rising due to the nice night. Despite feeling guilty over their ambush, not a part of him believes Phil faltered under the Academy heavyweight. All these years and he still marvels at his husband’s relentless professionalism and composure under these situations.

Although a part of him does wish he got to see those five seconds of shock. 

***

They’re feasing on Dan’s homemade enchiladas with reruns of _The Walking Dead_ playing in the background. Phil’s in the middle of briefing his incredibly anticipated lunch, scooping more sour cream into his plate. 

“And so he pitched me some ideas, gave me his card, and took the bill.”

“Sounds like a lovely date.”

Phil snorts. “Oh, and get this. Marianne told me they know about my channel, obviously, but he also brought up my Master’s and everything? It’s so crazy.”

"How absolutely astonishing," he mutters back, eyes trailing sideways. In the beat of silence that follows, he bites his lip and chuckles, practically feeling the other figuring it out. 

"Oh my god. You told them." 

"Maybe?"

"You're such an ass, oh my god." He stabs his fork into a piece of tomato and indignantly shoves it into his mouth. 

"Aw, come on, like _you_ would ever tell them!"

"Yeah, but literally any hint of a heads up would have been much appreciated." 

"So are you excited?" As much as Dan was enjoying Phil pouting and making a scene, he knew it was his way of edging around a topic. 

Phil rolls his eyes at the blatant attempt to change the subject, but earnestly replies, "Yeah. I really, really am."

“I’m not gonna say ‘I told you so’, but...” Dan smiles triumphantly. 

"There's something else." Phil adds with hesitation. He props his head on one hand and looks straight into Dan's curious gaze. This, among many others, is where they are polar opposites. Whereas Dan can't help but squirm under serious eye contact, Phil used it as another piece of him to grasp onto. 

Dan mirrors the gesture, signalling him to continue. This, he didn't expect; nothing but flitting theories are circulating his head. 

"I asked if the project could be a collaboration." He finishes shyly. 

"Well, I'd hope so. Unless you wanna try your hand at boom operating and Kraft services." Dan chuckles, unsure of where this is going.

"No, Dan, I," Phil smiles slightly and takes a deep breath. "I asked if I could have a co-director. A second person at the helm."

Dan stays silent, slowly piecing it together. He feels his pulse rise as his husband continues. 

"Look, before you can give me your whole spiel on how I should do this alone, you know I haven't done anything this massive in scale before. I can't do it alone--"

"Of course you could do it alone!" 

"--and so the studio will most likely hand me a shiny hip filmmaker for me to work with." Phil persists. He shifts his chair forward to grab Dan's hands. "And I guess you can't really blame me when I say there's only one person I can truly do this with. Or anything, for that matter." 

Dan bites his lip. It's fucking silly, so uncomprehendingly ridiculous, for him to blush at a man who he's seen break his foot trying to teach their dog how to ice skate or clean his puke when he was struck with the flu. But the thrilling rush comes through anyway, jolting nerves and cracking a smile so wide he can hardly remember the last time he's felt so earnestly estaticic about any prospect. 

Perhaps this feeling's been evading him since he was a spiteful twenty-something being offered a glowing opportunity to London, so many years ago. 

"You're absolutely sure?" He whispers, sickly sweet self indulgence tangling its way around a dozen counter arguments he could've used instead.

"One hundred percent." Phil smiles an enormous, goofy smile, bumps his knees into Dan's. At that, Phil picks up their dishes en route to the dishwasher. 

Dan should've seen it coming, really; just as he could pull ropes so effortlessly to blindside Phil, he had been lured just as easily, as if it were a natural counter-reaction in preserving their unfailing balance. 

So it was settled. They were going to make a film.


	2. Development

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year and a half whizzes by of developing the script, casting, pre-production, and a prominent place in media discourse. It had trouble with its financing, with outcries from traditional lobbyists and conservative media causing investors to pull out. Meanwhile, the skepticism throughout the film world continued, dismissing this project as a self-indulgent and doomed to flop. 
> 
> It didn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! happy day eight. my house lost power yesterday as the snow finally hit Vancouver, so i used that as an excuse to take a little break from my advent. but i'm still trucking through! i hope you'll enjoy this one :) xx

_Oscar Bait for Tiger Beat,_ they had called it. 

When the initial reports started circulating the internet, a Tuesday morning where neither of them slept in anticipation for the public announcement, it was like watching a flicker erupt into a blazing wildfire. 

Their corner of the internet, of course, was thrilled. Despite the fact that they’ve since retreated from YouTube and have steadily repealed their public presence, living a quieter life into their “internet retirement” by the year, people were elated. Congratulations started oozing out left and right from their friends and colleagues from that platform, minutes after they tweeted their announcement themselves: 

_@AmazingPhil: Hey guys! We have something exciting to finally announce..._

They’ve still been fairly active on social media, posting pictures and tweets of sunsets, and food, and Pancake, and of each other. The captions get less ironic, their pictures together more sincere This steady repealment of boundaries and layers, in conjunction with the steady reduction of their content on YouTube, continued until a single instagram post on Phil’s account March of 2021. A pale hand with long fingers stretching out almost past the frame, one of which sporting a thick black ring. 

A smiley face emoji for a caption. 

A seemingly neverending barrage of exclamations and excitement. No further response from either of them. 

When they announce they’re making a movie, a proper artistic journey that thrilled them both, their little corner rejoiced. An article from _Variety_ reporting their film’s development and concept was shared and reposted high and low, bleeding into a major talking point in the film industry. _Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair._

Of course, they anticipated some hesitation and backlash. They expected eyebrows to raise when people hear the news about two former YouTube stars, famous for vlogging in their bedrooms and inadvertently creating one of the most beloved _are-they-or-aren’t-they_ dynamic creating a horror/thriller arthouse film on being a queer young boy. An experimental, metaphysical story about a character trapped by a monster, a representation of his repressed sexuality. 

_Oscar bait for Tiger Beat._  
Film communities and discussion almost unanimously dismissed this project as such; a try-hard, pseudo-intellectual project from teeny-bop personalities who don’t know any better. 

Dan liked to joke that drama would follow them wherever they went, past their old careers and continuing for the rest of their lives, but they stuck to their isolationist policy on drama and controversy nevertheless. They keep their presence in the press minimal during pre-production, throwing themselves into work and collaboration as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. They work, and develop, and revise, and shape, for almost a year before the filming began. 

It’s been in Phil’s mind for as long as he can remember, and he’s told Dan about it for nearly as long. Phil was in love with the idea of pure horror and psychological thrillers used to represent repressed sexuality. Dan developed the social commentary of it. He worked on the layers of satire and critique on how people respond to ambiguous sexual identities, toxic masculinity, and even hints of British class system failure. 

When they pitched this in the first creative meeting with A24, they loved it. Phil’s professionalism and Dan’s passion for this project illuminated in such as way that excited the film producers. Phil and Dan insisted on as much LGBTQ+ people as possible at the creative helm of this project, and much to their delight, the executives pledged to follow. 

A year and a half whizzes by of developing the script, casting, pre-production, and a prominent place in media discourse. They reached historic levels of queer casting for a major independent film. It had trouble with its financing, with outcries from traditional lobbyists and conservative media causing investors to pull out. Meanwhile, the scepticism throughout the film world continued, dismissing this project as a self-indulgent and doomed to flop. 

It didn’t. 

They made it through production. They made it through post-production. Miraculously, finally, exhaustively, they finish their film. _Out,_ their next Great Endeavor, their creative baby, was real and finished. 

“I guess this is what it feels like when mothers hold their newborn babies,” Dan whispered, caressing the hefty metal case as if it were a human child. His fingers trace the yellow ridges, the small opening, inside and into the reel, glossy and thick. 

Phil smiles and swats Dan’s hand away. “You’re gonna break it. And it’s nowhere near the same. Newborn babies are much easier to make, I reckon.”

Dan threw his head back in laughter. He ran a hand down his face. “I can’t remember the last time we had a night off.”  
“What is a night off?” Phil cocked his head. They both laugh. 

“So what’s it gonna be, Phil? Expensive skybar, spontaneous trip to Paris to celebrate?” 

“Better than all of those combined: twelve-hour sleep before our flight to New York tomorrow afternoon.” 

“Ooh, fuck, man, you know how to get me going.” 

***

From New York, they go to Toronto, then Telluride. _Out_ makes its way through each festival, garnering praise and early buzz upon each screening. They get more interviews. _The Hollywood Reporter_ hails it as “a knockout.” Slowly and deliberately, initial cynicism dies down, replaced with a bizarre downpour of approval. 

With increased coverage of their film, questions turn to prods. The easygoing territory of the filmmaking process and the concept of their project start to roam a foreign but all-too-familiar territory about their lives. About them. 

Masters of ambiguity and of dodging uncomfortable questions, they manage to maneuver this with ease. Questions about their own sexualities and on the more private aspects of their partnership are continuously avoided, without hinting any shame of who they both are. They walk a fine line upon each interview, a feat of balance with each day of press. 

_What does this film mean to you in terms of your guys’ own sexuality and partnership?_

_The aim is always to ask that question back to the audience. You can say this is a physical representation of us internalizing this and expressing it back, and I think our aim with this one is to keep that conversation going rather than trying to give an answer._

_For the sake of contextalizing your work, and looking at the bold statement of this movie, why is it that you’ve chosen to keep your own sexualities private?_

_It’s a choice I’ve made a long time ago, since I’ve had a relatively public life since I was a teenager. We love conversations about this film and already the response has been so gracious, and that’s really what we’d rather focus on._

Eventually, closer to their wide release late November, they start to get questions about their YouTube careers from the past. Polite questions on how this work differs, to not-so-polite questions jokingly asking about their teenage girl demographic all those years ago, now that they were accepted as “legitimate”. 

One interviewer on a late junket, when Dan can feel a migraine forming behind his eyes and the deep shades of purple are growing deeper under Phil’s foundation-laden face, went so far as to show them their past videos on camera. The reporter laughs and smiles at them, presumably expecting them to squirm and groan for the sake of his piece. A default expectation of embarrassment at their past work. 

“I remember filming this one.” Phil remarked. It was a way to fill the silence more than anything else, since he didn’t know what they were meant to do after thirty seconds has gone by of _Phil is not on fire 10_ playing in front of them, with the reporter being the only person who was laughing. 

“Well I’d hope so,” Dan quipped. “We spent a good, like, three hours filming the footage.” 

The reporter--Ashton, if Phil remembered correctly--finally pauses the video and asked a question. “How does watching your old videos make you feel?” 

Like an electric current, Phil immediately felt Dan tense up the slightest amount beside him. He spoke first, mentally pleading with the other to not get defensive. “It’s fun, actually. We may not make videos like that anymore, but we loved it. Just like we love the newest video we made, _Out_ , coming soon to a theatre near you.” He jerks his head towards one of the many cameras pointing at them, and winks. He smiled when Ashton laughed at that, and he wished Dan would take his lead and stray away from this topic. 

“Do you feel the same way, Dan?” 

“Well,” Dan started, crossing his legs and straightening his posture. Phil braced himself. He kept the easy smile on his face for the reporter’s sake, to cushion damage he can already sense coming. Dan continued after a slight pause, “What you’re implying here, I think, is that we’re probably slightly uncomfortable about our core audience and of our previous work on a different platform. Embarrassed, even. But we’re really, really not. We never have been.” 

“I didn’t mean to imply--” 

“No, I think you did. And that’s valid, you know? I can understand how our change in demographic can provide a place for us to turn our back against an audience that supported and upheld our work for many years. And I know I speak for Phil when I say we love and...and _respect_ them. Present tense. People have always talked about our audience as if they were in on a secret about teenage girls or whatever, as if they had some sort of right to judge, when they never really have been. We know them the most, as it was first and foremost _our_ community. And we continue to be inspired by them.” He finished with a slight smile. 

***

Two days later, that two minute press junket, one among hundreds they’ve done that whole week, went viral. 

One month later, after almost three years since initial pitch, it was out to the world. Nearly unanimous waves of praise, along with comfortable box office numbers to boot. Certified fresh, ninety-three percent. The buzziest film of the season. The little movie that could. 

***

They found out on a Sunday morning. 

It was well past noon. Dan woke up to the feeling of Pancake’s wet nose nuzzling his cheek, impatiently pawing on his chest. His hand instinctively pets her fluffy back, and starts to feel around for turned-off phone. Phil continues to sleep like a corpse beside him. 

His chest starts to pound when he sees sixteen missed calls from their producers. 

He starts to smack at the Phil-shaped lump of blankets next to him. “Hey. Hey, wake up.”

He decides to open Twitter before calling anyone back, bubbles of anticipation popping up and down his gut. He feels Phil stir beside him, but every shred of his attention is hyperfocused on the flurry of words and pictures and messages all seeming to say one thing: 

_Academy nominations._

_Best Director._

_Best Picture._

Dan can feel the beginning stages of hyperventilating joy creeping up his chest, breathless disbelief freezing his insides. He hears Phil’s sharp intake of breath from beside him, after finally opening his eyes and peeking into Dan’s phone. 

“Holy fuck, Dan.” 

All Dan can do is shake his head. 

“Holy fuck.” He repeats, taking the phone away from Dan’s hand, tossing it aside, and bolting upright to bounce on the bed. “Dan, breathe. Wake up. Look at me.” He places two warm hands on his face, looking him in the eye. 

A smile slowly starts to form on Dan’s face, until every fold and wrinkle in his skin is making way to the blatant elation forming around his eyes, his now-red cheeks, his gaping mouth. Phil shares that same dumbfounded look of this belief as they relish in this moment, quiet and ecstatic, with Pancake nuzzled by their side. 

They were Oscar-nominated filmmakers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **while i fancy myself as a fan of the oscar race and of movies in general, i'm clueless when it comes to the actual business/production side of awards and releases. so out comes this soup of fantasy and fluff :D 
> 
> thank you so much for reading! comments/kudos/feedback, as always, would be a dream.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! this is pretty much the perfect representation of my two interests lmao. i'll be updating this regularly until it's done, and as always, comments/kudos/feedback make my heart sing. 
> 
> [reblog on tumblr](http://fringesandcringes.tumblr.com/post/168657102426/a-change-of-scenery-rating-t-phil-hesitates-at)? :)


End file.
